Blood and Sand

I watched two people die tonight on film.
One was an Iraqi baby, one of twins, in a hospital where there wasn't even an oxygen mask or a proper incubator for a prematurely born baby. Because the Coalition of the Willing had been all too willing to steal Iraqi wealth, to put priority to projects to exhange dinars with Saddam's face on for post-invasion currency, and to fatten up US contractors at the expense of children sick and starving from dysentery and malnourishment. That's not an easy thing for a father to see.
The other one to die was an American soldier, the sole survivor of a shot down Black Hawk helicopter. One of his comrades was burnt and charred in a horrific pose. He explained in his MidWest drawl that something was broken - I wasn't sure what, because he was made to walk anyway - before he was suddenly gunned down. When the first bullet hit, he seemed as surprised as I was.
Then a Microsoft window popped up, to ask me if I wanted to upgrade my Media player.
Video has an unreality, but it's important to remember that even if the news is shot like Made-For-TV movies these days (and in the case of the Jihadist films, like bad MTV music videos), the people in these films are real.
The worst experience I had with this was editing the results of a Shell-instigated massacre in the Niger-delta region of Nigeria. Some thugs from a neighbouring town had been hired - probably with local police - to attack an Ogoni village. Hundreds at least died. Usually by machete. MOSOP - the local liberation movement - had smuggled footage of the atroicty out, at great risk. As usual, the mainstream media ignored it (the same happened with the PKK footage of the Saddam gas-attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. I remember seeing that footage whilst its authenticity was being strenously contested, because Saddam was the West's guy).
I got drunk editing that footage from Nigeria. It was the only immediate way of dealing with it, in the traditional English manner. That and crying, of course.
I've finally managed to get hold of some resistance footage from Iraq. Most of its rubbish unfortunately. I mean that from a technical point of view. Some of it's quite well done though. I saw a statement from a resistance group that was in English - eloquent, reasonable and in many ways appealing. But three times in the film (which was 15 minutes long), there were mentions of 'foreign policy controlled from Tel Aviv', and a couple of other mad anti-Semitic allusions.
A shame. But one thing that really should be learnt by now, is to listen to these small voices of madness. My enemy's enemy is by no means my de facto friend. Usually these are the hints that tell us the insanity event horizon was a few miles back and receding. Just look at the footage of Dubya and his pet sheep book on 9/11 if you have any doubts.
Because I would like to think there was a resistance group out there I could identify with. I guess that's true of alot of Western lefties. Whilst I don't believe the media portrayal of the resistance (or, as it's called for some reason the "insurgence") as little Syrian-sponsored Ayatollahs, nor do I have a lot of time for the Jihadist point of view.
This week, Bush told the Americans that they would be in Iraq until at least 2008. By then, it seems more and more likely, there will be an assault on Iran, regardless of popular support. Bush claimed this week that no leader wanted war. Absolute shite, of course. I saw a bit where today where Peter Jay (I think) asked Jim Callaghan - then the previous Prime Minsiter - how he thought the Falklands War was going, under then Prime Minister Thatcher. 'I wish I'd had a war' he responded. If not for that war, the Thatcherist, Monetarist project in Britain - and perhaps most of Europe - would have died a death in 1983. If not for the Iraq War, then even the fraud of 2004 would not have been feasible for the Neo-Con crew in the US. And leaving aside the question of who was responsible for 9/11, it's likely at least that a good Iran event will help the Republican re-election in 2008, as an honourable Afghanistan flag-waver might help Gordon Brown soon too.
The link needs to be made between the resistance in Iraq and the liberation movements in the West. That means we lefties need to be backing non-religious resistance groups in Iraq. There must be some, as Islam was not exactly strong under the Baathist state - in fact the anti-religion position of communism was official policy until relatively recently, and certainly the new wave of fundamentalism made less headway in Iraq than in nearly any other Middle East state.
It looks at the moment though like an openly non-religious resistance group would find itself trapped between a rock and a hard place, (like the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, to give a favoured analogy). So if one group does come out, it's important that we get behind them as noisily and aggresiviely as possible.
Assuming, of course, that there's no mad anti-Semtitic, kill-the-queers, lock-up-the-women, religious bollocks to go with it :-)
Oh, this then...
Have you ever walked the lonesome hills
And heard the curlews cry
Or seen the raven black as night
Upon a windswept sky
To walk the purple heather
And hear the westwind cry
To know that's where the rapparee must die
Since cromwell pushed us westward
To live our lowly lives
There's some of us have deemed to fight
From tipperary mountains high
Noble men with wills of iron
Who are not afraid to die
Who'll fight with gaelic honour held on high
A curse upon you oliver cromwell
You who raped our motherland
I hope you're rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent
To our misfortunate forefathers
Whom you robbed of their birthright
"to hell or connaught" may you burn in hell tonight
Of one such man i'd like to speak
A rapparee by name and deed
His family dispossessed and slaughtered
They put a price upon his head
His name is known in song and story
His deeds are legends still
And murdered for blood money
Was young ned of the hill
A curse upon you oliver cromwell
You who raped our motherland
I hope you're rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent
To our misfortunate forefathers
Whom you robbed of their birthright
"to hell or connaught" may you burn in hell tonight
You have robbed our homes and fortunes
Even drove us from our land
You tried to break our spirit
But you'll never understand
The love of dear old ireland
That will forge an iron will
As long as there are gallant men
Like young ned of the hill